Announcing New Series: 'Eres Divina'

According to ibn 'Arabi, God is the One whom every lover loves in every beloved.

Having just gone through my first real experience with what its like to love, this saying really spoke to me. Spoke to me so loud and clearly that I had to put the book down and have a little teary-eyed time to myself. Tears of love, understanding, and graciousness to have just taken part in such a beautiful part of the human experience-- which had oddly enough just come to a close.

I went on to read the Sufi concepts of human personalities being the direct reflections of Divine qualities. Similar to a hologram we concentrate and manifest these qualities and traits in repeating and recognizing them around us.

Immediately what came to mind were the Islamic 99 names of God that I had committed to memory as a child. Hmmm I've been meaning to get working on my Arabic reading and writing again..

This got my mind reeling and came up with a new daily project series, combining 3 names a day into a piece, concentrating on the theme and translation of each Divine trait as I incorporated my research and practice of various periods of historical phases of Arabic calligraphy.

I was thinking against sharing these works and keeping them personal as a meditation and dhikr but after my first two pieces I decided to just combine them all into a series of 33 pieces total.

Stay tuned!

Desi Dress Up!

Really excited to wear this gorgeous sari I'm borrowing from a friend that has never been worn before. Tomorrow is a wedding of two close family friends of mine from all of growing up. Its complicated to explain but I'm excited to get all decked out!

This week has been a lot of reconnecting with the past and re-prioritizing obligations, etc. Its going to be interesting seeing people from high school, college, and other time periods of my life and personalities. Nerve-racking to say the least... but its all in my head I keep repeating..

Eeek I love the color!!

7StarSun- WATER.. last but not least

Saving the best for last, we had the theme of water shot at the Vortex Immersion Dome on the Bixel Lot downtown. This vignette was choreographed and conceptualized by Lara Helena Terstenjak. The two of us came up with the collection of underwater themes and creatures all to be shot with projections and UV lighting. And yes we did it again... incredible brainchild of such an incredible group!

Alrighty so we had Lara as a Nereid Sea Goddess on the Chinese pole.

She is wearing the Saraswati headpiece on top of another bigger headpiece, custom applique pasties, as well as a custom arm cuff. Brian Vacarella did an incredible job full body painting her into a beautiful blue.


We had two Archedream characters with Xan and Stephen on stilts as jelly/clownfish creatures holding lanterns in a complete UV stage setting.


There was this amazing acro-yoga piece with Chris and Ahni that honestly was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a while. Very creature like, with the two of them shape shifting as one being out of two.






There was a creature scene featuring Chris on his crazy Zig with Pam as one of the reptilian creatures lounging (holding on for dear life) in the metal webworks. Super trippy to see in the blacklight. There were 2 reptilian creatures, myself being the other one (more pictures coming soon!). The reptile outfits featured this amazing body gauze suit with patches of glitter scales and two new matching double-canister respirators. The last scene featured myself and Pam as reptilian creatures, Russia as a toxic mermaid, and Michael Wood as Neptune/Poseidon.



More pictures and videos coming soon.. but at least now my part is done as its onto post production now! Getting the edited reel together to get us onto those festival stages!

7StarSun- AIR

Last week, us at 7StarSun came together to create an amazing visual piece for the theme of "AIR" featuring choreography by Pamela Maravilla Samuelson. We shot at the beautiful Abundant Sugar in downtown LA by the Brewery. I joined creative brainpower with Pam to come up with the aesthetic concepts of modern cyber Butoh, with costumes consisting of shibari-inspired tethering, white painted legs, asymmetrical white face with chrome patterns, white palms, and cyber visors I constructed.

The theme being AIR, we stuck with a super clean WHITE palette which picked up projections and light freaking brilliantly! I was involved in performing in the winged portion (iridescent white organza from Dancing Wings), as well as 2 choreographed modern dance pieces, there was an aerial piece by Pam, and a projected hammock piece by Sarah Moser.

Airbrush and body art was done by Sunevil Lovechild of Evil Playground Body Art. Faces were done in a carefully chosen asymmetrical white butoh face blended into red with chrome accents.

Can't wait for more pictures and video from the shoot.. but from what I've seen this theme seems to be my favorite out of all four! We have such an incredible team of creative geniuses, everyone from the lighting to projection, to tech, dancers, photo, body art... so blessed and grateful to be on board.

All photo credits to the awesome Annie Gaia.

Brace Yourself!

My latest multi-disciplinary passion project obsession involves this vintage adult men's sweat-stained polio back brace Sunev found in a bag on a street and a stalk of corn that surprisingly took me a long time to hunt down.

Apparently corn is out of season and not carried anywhere... until it hit me that Ralphs up the hill would surely have it amongst their abundance of genetically engineered veggie selections. Lo and behold the guy was restocking the corn pile with fresh new identical stalks.

Bingo!

7StarSun sneak peek video up!

7SS Jan/Feb highlights from URSAMAJOR on Vimeo.

This has been my latest major project as both a performer and costume design. Looking good! Can't wait to see the rest of the footage and photos! So far we've shot for the themes EARTH, FIRE, and AIR and soon to be WATER.

7StarSun & Skyfire FIRE-- promo shoot

Second in the series of video and photo promo shoot for 7StarSun. This was a collaboration between 7SS and Skyfire, directed by Michael Wood. I was in charge of body art, makeup, hair, and costume stylingq with some rental items from GARB.

Here are some of my favorite pictures! Such a wonderful team of performers, camera, musicians, and tech team. Photo credits by Annie Gaia and Dustin Engelkind.

more photos to come!